Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Tyrannis: Lacking Content?

 Eve players are spoiled.

First off, we don't have to buy the game off the shelf (real or virtual) in order to play it, we just subscribe. Our expansions are free and twice yearly, and often have several new content changes/additions. All in all, its a good deal.

So when Tyraninis' feature page was launched there was some disappointment from several parts of the player base over the lack of announced new features. Instead there was only two: Planetary Interaction and Eve Gate (the website allowing access to in game emails, calendars, pilot and corp information, etc).

(Sarcasm On) Wow, only two new features for free? How dare they!? (Sarcasm Off)

Eve Gate is neat and handy from an organizational point of view, but its small potatoes in the grand scheme of things. But the fact of the matter is that Planetary Interaction is huge both in implementation and impact on the game.


In terms of implementation, they need to add the items for the various facilities that can be placed on the planet, the logic to mine materials and hook up to factories, schematics to produce new items that were simply NPC sold before, an interface to manage it all, skills to control access to it, logic to determine scarcity on popular planets, etc etc etc. And in terms of impact, the economy is going to be in flux for weeks if not months after this releases as major starbase operators look to power their facilities without visiting major hubs for supplies in high sec. The secondary effect could be the establishment of new smaller hubs in low sec and null sec as more items can be produced locally.

Follow that up with the hooks it will have for open warfare in the future, including the connection to DUST 514, and you have a major content delivery in the works there, on scale with (if not surpassing) the implementation of wormholes.

Being the fanboy that I am, I'm willing to cut CCP some slack on the major features of Tyrannis for now, assuming that the list of small improvements closer to release is similar to the quality of life improvements we saw in Dominion.

1 comment:

  1. This is the first expansion that I have been exicited about since the Orca came out. Since everyone can get a taste of it.

    I agree with the main Eve body, that I wish they would funnel their entire resources on fixing the lag situation. But I am still happy to see this. I just wish I got an idea of how much I need to save for the skill set.


    To me it is also telling on how little comments you are getting, that Tyrannis is getting a luke-warm reception.

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